


still

by Oparu



Series: The Bottomless Sea 'Verse / Dragon Outlaw Queen ficlets [19]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Other, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9291677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: Regina’s phone rings while Roland is missing. Mal’s silent in the woods. Their daughter is silent when she emerges.Still.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Companion to 'do fireflies cry too?' because I hate myself and needed to write Regina's feelings. Angst, grief, death....all the heavy emotions. And I hate myself quite a bit. 
> 
> and yet...some part of me needed to write it.

Part of her assures Roland on autopilot. _You did the right thing, we love you. You’re safe. Mal’s fine, she’s going to be fine._

Then Emma’s there and Emma can hold him and all she can think is that Mal’s cold, and she’s never cold. The forest is a mess, trees shattered, snow exploded around them. The wraith lies still, white on white with black hair liked spilled ink. 

Maleficent lies almost as pale. She screams at her to wake up, to come back, to have a fucking heartbeat. 

That she does, but it’s thready, too fast, too light, and the baby.

The baby.

Their baby. Their little one. The child the made in their bed, with Robin, the one they all agreed to try for The one they wanted, together. She rests her hand on the firm curve on Mal’s belly and wonders impossibly if she can have them both.

Roland’s alive, the traitorous part of her soul reminds her. Maleficent would be pleased with that. She put up a good fight but the marks of the wraith are on her mouth. The creature kissed her, came for her, tried to take her soul. 

Emma’s hand cracks across her face, pulling her back. “You have to take us to the hospital. I can’t do it, not this many people.” 

Emma’s blue eyes swim with worry and Regina can’t even comfort roland, because she promised she’d never be here again, never lose someone else she loved. Not Robin, not Mal…

Teleporting to the hospital hurts, aches like she’s been ripped open because she fuels her magic with grief. She kneels on the floor of the emergency room, wet knees on tile as the snow melts and she holds Mal’s head in her lap, but her eyes won’t open. 

Roland said she fell asleep. 

She should hug him, comfort him, tell him it’s not his fault, and she tries. She tries to stand and walk to him, but she can’t. She can’t leave, even when the medical staff swarm around, and she can’t pour her magic into Maleficent and save her, save the child, because magic doesn’t work that way. Small hurts, she can heal. 

This is too big. 

Whale uses words she knows. Words that usually make sense but she stares at him, tries to resist the urge to rip his heart from his chest and crush it because he can’t help her. They can’t save Mal from what she has to do through. 

Their baby is dead. The placenta tore from the uterine wall and Mal’s hemorrhaging internally. Whale has to repeat that for Robin, stop using the modern medical words and explain it on a level one understands without a cursed education. 

He turns, kicks the wall, punches the locker, and David grabs him. Holds him, because Regina can’t. She can’t take his anger, can’t even look at him without hating herself. 

She thought she could be happy, and look where she is. This is her fault. 

Robin shouts at David, curses him, the whole town, fate.

The quiet, vicious deity that gave them this life, where a soul-eating monster can lie sleeping in a puzzle box, and be opened by children. Regina doesn’t believe in gods. They take. Everyone takes. Wasn’t Daniel enough? 

Mal saved Roland. He’s in shock, and she can barely comfort him, but Roland insists she saved him, dropped from the sky as a dragon and fought. 

But the wraith killed his sister. It’s his fault, he should have stayed in town. 

Emma tries to help. Snow tries to calm him, and then Marian’s there, holding him close and she keeps whispering all the things Regina should.

But right now, she can’t be his mother. Can’t be Robin’s support, his love, because they’re losing Mal. 

(She just needs a blood transfusion, she’ll be fine.)

Losing the baby they named together. 

Fate finds a way to be crueler still, and Mal wakes, opening her eyes as new blood fills her veins. She’s awake in time to feel the unmistakably pain of their daughter slipping away. Contractions she bore so bravely with their first child, bring her to tears because she knows. Pregnancy is a strange mystery, but she knows. 

Too early. Too fast. 

There’s a tiny chance their daughter will still have a heartbeat, that somehow she hung on, but her lungs are too small and Storybrooke is not a town of medical wonders. There’s no helicopter to whisk her away to Portland, to Bangor, to New York, where babies survive the most horrible births. 

She’s part dragon, after all, and would hardly survive the trip. 

How can she look at Mal and tell her? How can she say words that doom their daughter? Robin can’t. He sobs into Mal’s hair and holds her and Regina can barely meet her eyes. 

Roland lived. Was it a trade? Keep one innocent life at the cost of another? 

“Look at me,” she says it over and over, holding Mal’s hands while her body brings their daughter to the air she’ll never breathe. She has to be born to die. Can’t remain an enigma, the life they loved before they held her; the foot that kicked Regina’s hand before breakfast. 

“Breathe.”

Regina demands of Mal what she can’t ask of herself. No one takes this toll out of her. The lives she loves suffer around her. Robin holds her hands, holds her shoulders, and this time, Whale catches their daughter. She’s grey and still, so still. 

Ignacia squirmed, twisted in Robin’s hands and flailed her chubby little legs. She was alive even before her first breath, announcing herself with her first cry. 

Their baby is silent. Whale wraps her in a blanket and she stares at him, stares at the blood patterned on Mal’s thighs. Whale holds their daughter for a moment, looks at her face. She waits for the terrible comment, the off-color moment where he fails again to resemble a human, but he only holds her. 

“I want to hold her.” Mal’s voice cuts through the silent room. “Please.” 

Whale takes a step and Regina stops him. She’ll carry her. She’ll hand their lost child to woman she loves. She’ll look at Robin. She owes them both. 

“I’ll take her.” 

Whale hands her the baby. Fia. Fiametta. Their little flame. Regina’s tears fall on her still little face and she can see Robin her mouth. Those cheekbones are Mal’s. Maybe her ears. She can’t tell. Iggie looks more like Regina every day and she wishes there was more Mal in her. 

Is she all of them/ Robin’s blood, her magic, and Mal’s bone? Fia held all of them in the tiny fingers that won’t open, in the feet that lie so small on the blanket. 

She hands Mal their daughter, Robin’s hand lands on her back and the three of them circle her in their arms. Robin’s tears fall on the blanket like fat drops of rain and Regina’s chest aches so she can hardly breathe and Mal kisses their daughter. 

“I’m sorry, little one. I wanted to know you. We all did.” 

She turns into Robin’s neck and sobs, heartbroken, empty, spent and Robin holds her in return. Mal sits there, balanced on pillows, blood still pouring into her veins to keep her alive. She holds their daughter and smiles, somehow serene in her grief. 

“We love you,” she promises, stroking that grey little cheek. “You are so loved.” 

It shouldn’t be like this. They should be laughing while their tears fall and in the moment between her gasps for breath, it occurs to her that this is the purest grief. She could blame herself, wants to, desperately, but Robin kisses her hair and Mal holds her face and between the two of them she can’t hate herself, as much as she longs to fall into that darkness. 

They love her. She loves them, and Henry is in the hall behind her. Roland needs to know they’re all okay and baby Ignacia has so many words to learn. She has Henry’s old tricycle and a whole sky to explore. She has a life, a beautiful, burgeoning life and this baby is supposed to join that. 

And she didn’t. 

She couldn’t. 

Later, Whale will tell them she died quickly. That she felt no pain. 

Later still, Regina will hold that cool little body in the dead of night and whisper all the stories she’ll never get to tell her. She’ll sob in Robin’s arms and he’ll cry with her in the shower as they figure out how to bring Mal home. How to help her heal while Roland thinks he killed his sister and Henry grows up too fast in fear that his parents will be torn apart in their grief. 

Ignacia, tiny as she is, doesn’t know. Can’t tell. Can’t be blamed for throwing a tantrum when Robin puts her to bed instead of Regina or for running into the baby’s room and dumping out all of her toys so that Mal finds her in the chaos of what was meant to be. 

Grief made her a monster, last time. It ate her from the inside, sinking dark teeth into the weakness of her soul. This time, it falls like rain, washing, pounding, eroding away all of her until she’s stone.

Marble. 

Dragon scales. 

She holds Mal’s head on her chest and Robin lies against her side and they all breathe in the heavy darkness. 

It’s silent.

Still. 

then the sun rises. Henry makes pancakes with Roland. She sets Iggie in the high chair, Robin makes coffee and he dances with Mal in the foyer, making her chase the mug in his hand. 

She laughs. She holds him, kisses him and they look at each other, really look.

Then at her. 

Her broken heart continues to beat. She hugs Henry, kisses the baby’s head and wraps her arms tight around Roland. 

“We love you.” Regina promises. “You are so loved.” 


End file.
